Interview with his Excellency Ilyumzhinov

Q: Kirsan Nikolayevich, the Kramnik-Topalov match clearly took a lot of nerves and energy from you. Do you still like inviting players to Elista?

A: It has already become a tradition to organize major events in Elista, the city that became the world’s capital of chess. We will continue hosting championships and other high-level tournaments here, in order to popularize chess in Kalmyk Republic and Russia . I would say that this has already become a daily routine of Kalmyk chess life.

Apart from that, we began cooperating with the international organization of disabled children. This year, along with the candidates matches, we organized a tournament for disabled children. We hope that this event becomes traditional.As for the toilet scandal… Well, it only added some spice to chess.

Q: So you recall it with a smile now?

A: We are all human beings. It is life, everything happens, especially with big money and the World Champion’s title at stake. Also, Topalov’s example showed that chess players are not always participating in decision making. Three days and three nights I negotiated in City Chess and, thank God, the conflict was resolved.

Q: What measures were taken to prevent such incidents in the future?

A: We are blocking all the signals in the playing hall in order to rule out the computer assistance. The players share restrooms and relaxation rooms. And there is another solution I am firm about: cutting down the thinking time. When Topalov and Kramnik played their 25-minute tiebreak games, they didn’t run to the toilet! You were in Elista last autumn, and you remember that the hall was half-empty during the long-play games, but was full of excited spectators for the rapid games. Popularity of the web relay rose even steeper by the end of the match. The rapid games were very tense and exciting. In addition, I think that their quality did not differ much from the classical control games.

Q: So, your new proposal is 1 hour for the entire game?

A: Maybe more, but this is the direction we are going.

Q: Will the classical control be kept only for the most important tournaments?

A: For World Championships, yes. However, we will still decrease the time from 7 to 4-5 hours. For all other official tournaments we will use 20 or 25 minutes per player. All chess players I talked with support this idea. During the Olympiad in Turin we questioned female players, and 100% of them backed the FIDE control. I guess 90% men share their opinion. When I met Vladimir Kramnik in Paris recently, he said that the classical control should be preserved for World Championships, but rapid control can make chess more exciting for the public.

Q: In the mid-90s you made a courageous reform, introducing the knock-out format for the World Championship. Everybody seemed to get used to it eventually. Do you feel pity abandoning this format, your own innovation?

A: Life changes and we cannot stand still. I am sure someone prefers stationary phones to cell phones, but one has to deal with both. Large bodies such as FIDE or FIFA must develop constantly to avoid stagnation. The decision to introduce the knock-out system was made at the Presidential Board in Singapore in 1995. Do you remember that time? I got tired from running between Karpov and Kasparov, trying to resolve the situation. The world of chess could not wait for ever. Leading grandmasters were saying they are losing interest to chess: there was no money, no promise, and only a few players on the very top were getting all the money and fame. One had to take unusual steps to deal with that usurpation of chess power.

It was very hot in Singapore , +40. I remember I went outside and met Alexander Borisovich Roshal near the hotel – blessed be his memory. We went into a cafe across the street, and I said:

– Alexander Borisovich, something must be invented, it must be a bomb!

We spent the entire night in the cafe, discussing various reforms in chess. Afterwards Roshal wrote an article with the heading ‘ Aurora salvo in Singapore ‘!

Initially I received no support. The atmosphere heated so much that we had to call a break. However, the time proved that the idea was right. I offered 5 million dollar for the prize fund. Many players who were among the top 20 or 30 told me that now they could plan their budgets: if you qualify through three or four stages of the World Championship, you get $40,000-50,000. This allowed us to keep many professionals in chess, and increased popularity of our sport as well. So I think the knock-out achieved its goal.

On the other hand, the last-year match Kramnik-Topalov returns us to the classical match tradition. I suggested introducing a knock-out World Cup, and give its winner the right to challenge the World Champion in a match. Thus we preserved both formats.

Q: Candidates matches were used to determine the title challenger until the mid-90s, and then they disappeared. Will they disappear again after a brief return in Elista?

A: It turned out very difficult finding sponsors for such matches. There are players from Hungary , Israel , Norway , USA , France and other countries playing in Elista, but none of the national federations managed to find the money for this competition. They say: we can find the money for a title match, but not for a qualifier. When the decision about the candidates matches was taken, Makropoulos and other FIDE officials were confident that potential sponsors will line up for these matches, but now they came back to my pocket. And I said: okay, I give these $500,000, but this is the last time! There are only two competitions attractive to sponsors: the World Championship, and the World Cup. The interest to the latter is growing, especially after the latest reform that minimized the randomness of the competition.

Q: Are you still trying to bring chess into the Olympic family?

A: We are working on it every day. You probably know that we opened a FIDE office in Lausanne , getting closer to the IOC headquarters. We work in all the structures of the IOC – committees, IOC associations etc., and ask the IOC to state criteria for an international sports federation to join the Olympic family. They are reluctant to state it, and we keep pressing.

For example, why curling became an Olympic sport? When they applied for the status, they advertised curling as ‘Chess on Ice’. Isn’t it absurd that chess on ice is an Olympic sport, and ‘mere’ chess is not?

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14 comments

This man is a dictator and should be removed from his presidential FIDE-chair.Furthermore, he is lying.Quite a lot of top players are against cutting down the thinking time.Classical chess and rapid chess aretwo different things, so he wants to destroy the first in favor of the second.If i get it right, he actually wants to forbid it ?So in classical time control (120/40+60/20) tournaments no moreElo-points at stake ?Classical and rapid chess should peacefully coexist, both have their merits !

But there were a few things which bothered me. First of all Kirsan stated that he was having all the big name chess events in Elista in part to popularize chess in Russia, this must be a joke?! Secondly, I was a rather depressed hearing that FIDE time controls will most likely be shortened by a lot and that we will not have the classical time controls and great games that we had back many years ago.

On a brighter note it is great to hear that Kirsan and FIDE is pressing the Olympic community about adding chess to the games.

Perhaps long matches should alternate between short and long time control games. Televise the short games live, summarize the long games. Weight the types differently: 3 points for winning a long game, 2 points for winning a short game, 1 point for a draw in either case to encourage exciting play as well as 0 points for a loss.

Again this discussion of reducing time 🙁 When is the FIDE ever going to learn that chess fans love the long battle and the high quality games ? Only a very superficial person could think that faster automatically means more spectactle. People still remember the crazy long matches with the long time controls….who ever remembers monaco blind chess/ rapid matches?? I still remember the excitement as a kid of running to the door to read the newspaper articles of the K & K matches…not even to mention analysing the adjourned games…would those matches just be as exciting if they were held within 60 minutes time control….? or only 6 games long? Where is the understanding of heroism ? Besides the shorter the time control the more advantage for players who can recall every opening 23 moves deep…with as a consequence very boring and non creative chess….pff…okay..i am willing to proof this scientifically if this guy will continue his non sense…hypothesis 1) the longer time control the higher the quality of the games hypothesis 2) chess fans prefer heroism of long high quality battles over fast spectacle shows…cheers A

People watch endless long games of snooker, cycle games of 7 hours, or formula 1 races that last for hours…it is not about the speed but the marketing …and the longer a game the more time to present commercials in between !

I agree with : ‘Classical and rapid chess should peacefully coexist, both have their merits !’ cheers A

I like the idea of weighting the longer games heavier than the rapid games. Perhaps FIDE should develop a heavier ELO rating formula for standard length games, as well. Or, a “lighter” ELO rating formula for faster games instead. This way certain shorter time control games results could be fairly factored into players’ overall ELO ratings rather than separately. For instance, multiply the 25 minute game results by 3/4 or 2/3 to accurately reflect their true stature.

Time Controls in GeneralIn many ways, chess is like other one-on-one sports:

In tennis, many times one player will come from behind to win a long match, thus shorter matches often yield different winners.

In wrestling or boxing, who can forget famous late match turn-arounds between two closely matched opponents?

With shorter time controls. certainly The game dynamics change. More weight will be placed on complex middle game play/ability than sound , thorough analysis/calculation.

Chess is not popular on TV now, it wasn’t popular on TV long ago and it won’t be popular on TV in the future. Learn to live with it folks. The speed of the games doesn’t matter a jot.

In order to watch chess on TV you have to have a fundamental understanding of the game. Anyone can watch for e.g a basketball game and follow it without any problem. Most people (and I include most chess players by the way i.e patzers) haven’t a clue what is really going on during high level games as evidenced by some comments made during the games on line.

El Presidente appears to feel that chess professionals are the most important people in the chess world – They aren’t. They form a tiny, tiny, miniscule minority of chess players who happen to want to make a living out of playing chess. Why don’t they form their own association and paly their rapid chess and leave everyone else to play the real thing. Oh Yeh! they tried that but it didn’t really work.

Unfortunately I forsee a situation in which the vast majority of amateurs who want to play reasonably long games will break away from the national federations and FIDE if they are forced to play “skittles” instead of real chess.

Thinking time does count toward the quality of games. If a good player was told – you have 25 mins thinking time but we’re giving your opponent 2 1/2 hours would they complain? Yes because they would recognise that the opponent had more time and would probably come up with better moves!

Given that this man is a dictator you have to remember that if he says that everyone in Elista/Kalmykia wants ice cream for breakfast then by God everyone wants ice cream for breakfast (or else!). I doubt if he asked anyone’s opinion on the subject of time controls, he just feels that his word should be law.